PAD on Bad Days and the Comfort of Sharon

I've been sick, Jackson's been sick, Stella's still sick. Not the swine flu, the "high school field trip to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland Oregon" flu -- Stella brought it home with her. Today I ran my car into the back of someone in a dusty Lexus on the way to a meeting in Palo Alto. Our heater's broken so it's very cold in the house.

I had my last GATE class this morning at Regnart, where I've been teaching fifth graders. This year we had fourth graders in the fall and fifth graders in the winter. It's easier on me that way, only 20-25 kids at 7:30 in the morning instead of 45 all at once, mostly incredibly smart boys who want to write about exploding toilets, hate, and Sponge Bob, unless it's the mostly incredibly smart girls who want to draw pictures of cartoon fairies on their notebooks and write poems with long words about flying and colorful rainbows and other things that make me want to scream. It's also always the most badly behaved boys who write the most interesting things -- and girls -- well, it's just the wrong age for them. It's a miracle that I kept writing after I was in fifth grade. At all.

So, I didn't pad on Sunday or Monday, and today, I have some notes but I don't like them. We'll see. I've discovered Mark Doty, whose name I've long heard, but whose poems I've just begun to read. Reminds me of Larry Friedlander a little bit. Lots to learn. He has a good blog. I'm also reading Sharon Olds again, because no matter how crappy I feel, her poems always make me feel better, no matter how grim her poems are, how crunchy with sex (embarrassing) or slimy with parents, her poems comfort me. I wish she had a blog. Too private, I guess, which is strange, considering what she writes -- or at least, considering the voice in her work. She is so beautiful. Someone confused me for her, once, at Squaw Valley, accross the parking lot. My hair was long and out of control, and hers wasn't so gray yet -- I've never felt as beautiful again as I did that summer. Mark Doty is pretty beautiful, too, it seems. Maybe I just need new glasses.